Thursday, January 12, 2006

Alleviated fears....

One small thing that alleviates any fears I have about my new career not being in demand is the number of times I hear them call for an X-ray or CT for a patient on those real life medical shows on TV. I am pretty much addicted to the two shows "Trauma: Life in the ER" and "Paramedics" on the Discovery Health Channel. I watch them all the time and for almost every patient who arrives at the ER they call for an X-ray or CT. So does this really represent real life? I don't know for sure. It sure looks real on the show. A lot more real than say the TV drama ER on NBC or the comedy show Scrubs, but how real?

I know there are some nurses and maybe some other healthcare workers who read this blog, so leave me a comment and let me know what you think. How often do the docs order images for a patient, in your experience? Do you think that the imaging dept is an important and necessary dept in the hospital? Have you ever had any problems with an X-ray tech? Or have any techs out there had any problems with nurses? Just curious.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey! muchas gracias for the B-Day wish ..it is never too late! I recently found Katie's blog and yes I love it ;). I hope you like my blog. Im honestly not a big writer but Im trying to make things more interesting since my audience is growing hehe.
Donde aprendiste a hablar espanol? yo creo que lo escribes muy bien !
Sonia

Morgan said...

From my extremely limited experience in the hospital, I have seen several patients suspected of having DVT's being checked out by rad. techs (at least that's who I think they were). They bring the machine right to the patient's bed and look for any possible blood clots. I asked if I could watch once, and was amazed that they were able to figure anything out from what they saw on the screen. Is this the type of thing you will do too?

Lisa & Adam said...

I couldn't tell you what proportion of patients that come through A&E (that's ER to you) are sent to x-ray - but the radiographers are certainly kept busy at my placement hospital!